Chattooga Quarterly
Spring, 2007

Trailing Issaqueena

Director's Page
The legend of Issaqueena is popular in our local cultural iconography
On December 28, 2006, Marie Mellinger died in her home on Valley Street in Clayton, Georgia, at the age of 92. Marie spent a lifetime learning and teaching about nature. She was a great friend of the Chattooga River, and the Chattooga Conservancy. Read more.

Walhalla Watershed
The regularly scheduled meeting of the Walhalla City Council on January 9, 2007, promised to be routine and uneventful, at least according to the agenda posted on the door at City Hall: Call to Order; Welcome; Approval of Minutes; Old Business; New Business; Committee Reports; Mayor’s Comments; Adjourn. In fact, except for two local reporters, no one from the general public showed up for the meeting, and even they left after the committee reports when the mayor, the city administrator, and Walhalla’s six city council members moved into closed session to discuss a “contractual matter.” Read more.

Trailing Issaqueena
Historians have argued for well over one hundred years about the origin of a local legend in upstate South Carolina, circa 1760, about a young Cherokee woman who made an epic ride from her native village of Keowee to a log fort on the edge of the Carolina frontier, to warn her white lover of an imminent Indian attack. Issaqueena, also known as Cateechee, supposedly named the streams along the way according to the estimated cumulative mileage of the journey as 6 Mile Creek, 12 Mile Creek, 18 Mile Creek, etc., until she reached the fort that was approximately 96 miles away. Read more.

Woodall Shoals
The Chattooga River begins in Jackson County in western North Carolina and then snakes south, marking the border between Georgia and South Carolina. Outcrops of metamorphic rock create rapids and waterfalls, making the Chattooga a picturesque river and a popular destination for photographers, canoeists, and kayakers. The Chattooga is a designated Wild and Scenic River, with the Sumter National Forest on the South Carolina side and the Chattahoochee National Forest on the Georgia side. Read more.

Watershed Update
What’s Up With I-3?
As you may recall, in August 2004 Congress appropriated $2.4 million to study the feasibility of building an interstate highway from the port of Savannah, Georgia, to Knoxville, Tennessee. Georgia’s Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss introduced the bill asking for the interstate highway feasibility study, giving reasons that such a highway was needed to honor the 3rd Infantry Division known as the “Tip of the Spear” during the second Iraq War; to promote the efficient movement of troops between military bases during an emergency; to promote regional commerce; and, for safety. One possible route for “I-3” would be right through the Chattooga River watershed along the highway 441 corridor. Read more